Engineers honoured at Royal Academy of Engineering Awards

Professor Nigel Brandon and Professor Chris Toumazou both receive Silver Awards - News

By Naomi Weston
Thursday 7 June 2007

In recognition of their outstanding personal contributions to British engineering, Professor Nigel Brandon and Professor Chris Toumazou were awarded the prestigious Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Award on Tuesday night.

The Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal was established in 1994 to recognise an outstanding and demonstrated personal contribution to British engineering, which has led to market exploitation, by an engineer working in the United Kingdom.

Professor Nigel Brandon

As Director of Imperial College London’s Energy Futures Lab and Shell Chair in Sustainable Development in Energy, Professor Brandon  is at the leading edge of fuel cell technology in the UK. He established the first Rolls Royce fuel cell laboratory in 1992 and was co-inventor of the Rolls Royce Integrated Planar Solid Oxide Fuel Cell, now exploited through Rolls Royce Fuel Cell Systems.

After joining Imperial in 1998, Professor Brandon also co-invented a novel metal-supported solid oxide fuel cell, which was spun out from the College in 2001 to form Ceres Power. After roles as CEO and then CTO, he is now Chief Scientist of Ceres Power, which successfully entered the AIM Market of the London Stock Exchange in 2004.

"I am delighted to receive this prestigious award from the Royal Academy of Engineering," comments Professor Brandon. "I would like to thank all my colleagues in industry and at the College with whom I have enjoyed collaborating in these exciting developments."

Professor Brandon was appointed to the Shell Chair in Sustainable Development in Energy at the College in 2004. In 2006 he became the EPSRC Energy Senior Research Fellow, acting as an ambassador for UK energy research.

Professor Chris Toumazou

Professor Toumazou , Director and Chief Scientist of the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College London was also awarded the prestigious Silver Medal.

At the age of 33 he became one of the College’s youngest Professors and has made outstanding contributions to the fields of low power analogue circuit design, current mode circuits and systems for radio frequency and biomedical applications.

Professor Toumazou holds the Winston Wong Chair in Biomedical Circuits at Imperial and has successfully published over 320 research papers in the field of radio frequency and low power electronics as well as 23 patents, many of which are fully granted.

His recent pioneering research has shown how the natural analogue physics of silicon semiconductor technology can be used to replace and monitor biological functions. This has enabled, for the first time, the development of one of the world's first totally implantable cochlear prosthetics. Work is also ongoing on the development of an artificial retina and pancreas.

Toumaz Technology started up in 2001, initially as a silicon radio chip company making very low power devices for mobile phones. In 2004 it spun out its radio division to Taiwan in a new company called Future Waves, and Toumaz Technology concentrated on ultra-low power medical devices. The latest product is the 'digital-plaster'. This is a small silicon nano power chip that sits inside a plaster and continuously monitors a patient’s vital signs, such as heart-rate, ECG, temperature and activity level and sends the information wirelessly to the hospital data bank via the mobile phone.

Professor Toumazou led a major campaign to raise £26 million to fund the creation of the new Institute of Biomedical Engineering (IBE) at Imperial College London, which opened its state-of-the-art, purpose-built facilities in 2006. By combining the strengths of Imperial’s world class research schools in engineering and medicine, the IBE is drawing together scientists, medics and engineers to drive major advances in key areas of medical diagnosis and treatment, including personalised healthcare, regenerative medicine and biomedical imaging.

His goal at the Institute is to create an international centre of excellence in biomedical engineering research – generating high quality intellectual property, and accelerating the commercial realisation of technologies to improve the lives of people around the world.

He commented: "I am delighted to receive the Academy’s Silver Medal. Interdisciplinary and translational research is all about mixing the ingredients to create novel and disruptive platform technologies. It is so exciting to see this mixture of ingredients gel in the institute of biomedical engineering."

"The greatest inventor is the engineer," said Lord Browne of Madingley, President of The Royal Academy of Engineering, who presented the Silver Medals. "Engineers approach a problem in a manner which is both visionary and realistic – they draw simultaneously on science and business to provide solutions to challenges through the application of new technology," he added.

Last night also saw Mario Iobbi, Imperial Bioengineering PhD student , formally awarded the ERA Foundation Award, of £40,000, from The Royal Academy of Engineering. He won the award for his idea and business plan for the Saturation Driven Oxygen Therapy (SDOT) device, which will help sufferers of emphysema, cystic fibrosis and other breathing-related conditions. It works by automatically adjusting the flow of oxygen to a patient according to their needs rather than having a fixed flow of oxygen.